


Man Down

by 221b_hound



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BAMF!John, BFFs, Doctor!John, Don't wake John suddenly when he's having nightmares, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, PTSD, combat flashback
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-13
Updated: 2012-06-13
Packaged: 2017-11-07 15:50:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/432846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This story was written for this prompt on the kinkmeme:  John has a flashback during one of Lestrade's surprise drugs busts.</p><p>This story is based on Hollywood style flashbacks, not on any real experience of any survivor of PTSD actually goes through. My sincere apologies to anyone who has actually ever had to deal with real life trauma.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Man Down

A tiny whimper sounded from behind Sherlock’s closed bedroom door. Rapid breathing. A distressed moan. The sounds of a man in phantom pain, in imagined or remembered terror.

Sherlock stood outside his own door, hand on the handle, wondering what was best to do. It wasn’t often that he was caught like this, unsure of the correct action. It annoyed him. It worried him. John worried him.

It annoyed and worried him, too, that he hadn’t deduced the use of hallucinogens in the cult’s practices, when he’d sent John in through the side door. By the time he’d forced his way through the back door and joined his partner in the basement, the fumes had already begun to affect John’s behaviour: making him dazed yet aggressive. John had stopped just short of incapacitating Sherlock along with the cult leader and two of his acolytes, muddily grasping that the tall man was not the enemy. The drug was, of course, part of how Franklin had manipulated his Brixton-based cult members into committing their acts of atrocity. Sherlock could only assume that John’s limited exposure to the stuff, combined with his military training, had helped him to resist the worst of it.

He’d dragged John out to fresh air as soon as he could, and they’d walked home, once it was clear that sitting in a cab was going to make John vomit. The fresh air did the smaller man good, and he swore when they reached Baker Street at 5am that a hospital visit wasn’t necessary.

“Sleep. Just sleep, Sherlock. ‘S all I need. Just… just…”

But he’d staggered up the stairs and near collapsed on the floor, and he was muttering almost incoherently by then. In the end, it was easier to steer John into Sherlock’s room rather than try to drag him up more stairs to his own. John had folded, shuddering, onto the bed, apologising to Sherlock in a disjointed way that ‘tonight’s probably going to be bad. Just try to ignore me, okay.’

So here Sherlock was, failing to ignore the sounds of the nightmare as requested. He further failed to ignore John by carefully opening the door. John was curled into a tight ball on his side, dressed still in his cargo pants and sleeveless undershirt, gasping like he’d run across London, keening sounds caught in the back of his throat.

Sherlock stretched a long hand out to place on John’s shoulder. Maybe, he thought, touch would comfort him. He knew that it was supposed to comfort people. 

He only just avoided the awkward, violent response as John yelled and threw a punch. It was hardly likely to connect, thrown from that angle, but the evidence was in. Touch was not, at this point at least, comforting. John hadn’t even woken up. Instead, chest heaving in unbroken nightmare, he’d crawled along the bed and seemed to be trying to climb the bedhead to get away from whatever chased him.

Sherlock tried gentle hushing noises, saying John’s name, even singing a little, but the response was the same. John couldn’t hear him. Instead, John curled into a ball; made himself into the smallest target possible.

At a loss, Sherlock retrieved some nightwear, left, closed the door and walked up to John’s room for what little sleep he could manage.

**

Three hours later, an almighty crash from downstairs flung Sherlock out of shallow, restless sleep. He was on his feet and wondering where his door had gone for the briefest second, until he reoriented himself: _not my room; case, gone a little wrong; this is John’s room – **John!**_

He was flying down the stairs in pyjama bottoms and t-shirt before he took in a living room full of police and Lestrade standing, arms folded, glaring at Sherlock’s open bedroom door, saying loudly: “You bring it on yourself, Sherlock, keeping evidence to yourself like this. Spill about the cult, and I’ll call off the drugs bust!”

From Sherlock’s bedroom came a strangled cry, a yell of pain, suddenly cut off, and another almighty crash. Lestrade caught sight of Sherlock on the stairs, his eyebrows climbing in surprise, at exactly the same moment one of his uniformed officers came flying out of Sherlock’s bedroom, most definitely not under his own steam. The officer ricocheted off the door jamb and staggered into Lestrade’s irritated arms.

And when the short, angry, dazed man appeared in the doorway, the officer tried to clamber over the top of his commanding officer in order to get away.

John Watson crouched, wary, eyes darting around the room as his breath rasped – but whatever he was seeing, it was obviously not the living room of 221B. His gaze was unfocused, and he appeared to be flinching at something nobody else could see.

“Murray!” his voice was harsh, “Murray? Where are they?” He ducked at nothing, crouched closer to the ground and suddenly began to call in a rapid, military bark: “Man down, Murray, shit, make that men down, fucking hell, we’ve got sniper fire, Jesus, where’s the back-up?” He was looking for a gun he wasn’t wearing, looking around at things no longer there, searching through smoke and tracer fire from another life. A fine sheen of sweat covered his face and limbs.

Lestrade wisely chose to stand still, trying to assess his next move. He hadn’t seen this precise reaction before, but in his police career he had certainly seen a thing or two about PTSD and vivid semi-waking nightmares. He figured it would be sensible to give Dr Watson a wide berth until someone could wake the poor bastard up.

Behind him, the uniform was muttering about the little spitfire who’d been in Holmes’s bed and had disliked being shoved onto the floor in so rough a fashion. In the living room, to the doctor’s right, Anderson stepped towards John, hand outstretched. He seemed to mean it kindly.

John Watson, however, seemed to think Anderson was an Afghan insurgent holding a pistol at the end of the offered hand. It would certainly explain the sudden and explosive way the doctor lunged, coming up under Anderson’s arm, seizing the wrist in his two hands, twisting and turning until Anderson shrieked. In the next moment, Anderson’s feet were swept from under him and he crashed to the floor, his yell cut off in a nasty choking sound with the doctor kneeling on his throat, Anderson’s hands pinned on the floor above his head. The doctor was yelling for Murray again, for a sit rep, for his goddamned gun.

And that was when Sherlock, who might have known better, stupidly did almost exactly as Anderson had done. He stepped off the bottom stair, and John’s head snapped around to see him.

“John…”

Who knew the doctor could move so damned quickly? Not Lestrade. One minute, there he was, perched on top of the choking Anderson, the next, he had tackled the consulting detective to the floor. But the intention was most definitely not the same. The tackling of Sherlock had been achieved with a strange kind of gentle urgency, John’s arms behind his back and head to cushion the fall, as though Sherlock had already been on the way down.

Sherlock, startled by the reaction, stared mutely at John as the doctor held him down, not as an enemy but with one sure hand pressed with incredible strength against his right pectoral muscle, the other working over his head, throat, shoulders, waist – frantic and fast, but with method. Satisfied that he’d found no further wound, his right hand joined the left, pressed fiercely down on Sherlock’s chest.

“Shit. Murray,” he was muttering, “MURRAY! I need a med kit, now, **now, _NOW!_** ”

“John,” Sherlock tried to say, and suddenly John’s hand was smoothing over his forehead.

“Shh, it’s all right, Pete. Stay down. Help’s on the way. Help’s coming. Sergeant Healey’s called base, they’re coming. Hold on.” John’s hands were still compressing the non-existent wound on Sherlock’s chest, keeping him pinned. “Help’s coming.”

“I’m fine, John.”

“Yes. Fine. All fine. Help’s coming. Evac. Coming. You’ll be… you’ll be…”

Sherlock seized John’s wrists. “John. It’s Sherlock. I’m fine.”

But John’s eyes were closed and he was shaking his head.

Beside the sofa, Anderson had struggled up, coughing violently. Beside the table, Donovan, who had been rifling through a pile of CD cases, found them slipping in her tense grip and she dropped the lot.

As crashing sounds went, it was pretty mild, but it had John Watson curled over his patient, shielding Sherlock’s torso and head with his own body, breathing raggedly, swearing the air black and blue.

Sherlock wrested a pinned arm free, wrapped a hand across John’s shoulders. “Stand down, Captain Watson!” he snapped in an impressive command voice, “Evac’s here. Stand down.”

But John didn’t move. Couldn’t move. His whole body was trembling.

“Stand down, soldier!” Sherlock tried again.

“Yessir!” But still John didn’t move.

“At ease, Captain.”

“Sir. Shot, sir. I’ve been… shot. I can’t… I… can’t…”He shuddered. “Pete?” His voice was small, and so sad, “Told you. Told you help was… help was…”

In the utterly silent room, Sherlock changed tactics, the hand curled around John’s head, stroking his hair gently. “I know. Help’s here, John. It’s all right. Stand down. It’s Sherlock. It’s over.”

John was still, his breath hitching, but slowly, so slowly, calming. He took a deep, shaking breath. Another.

John sat up, dazed, his right hand moving to his own left shoulder, and he looked at his hand as he drew it away, wonderingly, looking for the blood. “I was… I’ve been… I…”

Sherlock, still flat on his back, raised a hand to John’s cheek. “You were. Not now. You’re all right now.”

“I’m….” John sounded bewildered, but his breath was starting to even out, despite the adrenalin still flooding his system. His brow creased; he looked down. “Sherlock?”

“I’m fine.” Sherlock lifted his t-shirt to reveal the lack of gaping wound, the lack of exposed muscle, blood and bone. “See?”

John, still dazed, splayed his hand over Sherlock’s chest, where moments before he remembered trying to staunch spurts of arterial blood. He traced Sherlock’s unblemished skin, gently at first, and then his hands were checking, like the first time, a brisk, professional search for wounds that didn’t exist now. He even went so far as to sit back on his haunches, tuck his hands under Sherlock’s shoulders and lift him, searching for bullet wounds in his back. Sherlock braced himself against John’s chest.

“See. Fine,” he said patiently.

They sat on the floor, facing each other in crumpled nightwear, and John hadn’t really noticed yet that they had company, and Sherlock’s focus was so tightly on the man in front of him he simply didn’t care about the audience.

“We were ambushed,” John said, his brain not quite in the now, “Sergeant Lancer. Pete. He…” John took a deep breath, taking him closer to the present. “Died. He died.” John splayed his hand over Sherlock’s chest again. “Chest wound. I couldn’t get to my kit under fire. Murray was down. And then I got shot.”

Someone made a sound; a sigh, a release of tension or of sympathy or of empathy, and John’s return to the now was complete. He blinked, looked up at Lestrade, caught sight of Donovan and Anderson in his periphery, the uniformed boy looking pale and still a bit frightened.

John groaned and, still on his knees, curled into himself, hands over his head, drawing ragged breaths. “Sherlock?”

“Yes, John?”

“Please tell me I didn’t shoot anyone.”

“You didn’t shoot anyone. I doubt you’ve even done Anderson permanent injury, which is probably for the best.” Sherlock didn’t sound entirely convinced.

John nodded miserably. “Great. Terrific. And the reason we’ve got the gang all here to witness my extravagant post-poisoning psychotic episode is…?”

Lestrade cleared his throat. John looked up at him reluctantly.

“I had an idea that Sherlock could be persuaded to actually hand over some of the evidence of your case on the strength of an early morning drugs raid,” said Lestrade, “Which was, if I may say so, a spectacular display of the Yard cocking up in no uncertain measure. I’m very sorry, John. I’m particularly sorry we let young Wittington here turf you out of bed.”

“Sorry I pitched him into the wardrobe,” mumbled John in reply, “Though at the time I genuinely thought he was trying to cut my throat.”

“At the time we thought you were Sherlock.”

“Yeah. Terrible things tend to happen when people think I’m Sherlock.” At that, John even managed to quirk a smile at the man in question. Sherlock raised an eyebrow, but ignored a response in favour of regaining his feet. He put a hand out to John who, after a moment, clasped it and allowed himself to be drawn up.

John passed a shaking hand over his forehead, then regarded the trembling limb with an angry frown.

“Give him the evidence, Sherlock. I need a shower.” He rubbed his scarred shoulder in almost absent-minded habit, “And painkillers. Get me painkillers. And tea. And breakfast.” Ignoring all of the eyes on him, John grabbed the stair railing and used it to steady himself on the way to the bathroom.

When the bathroom door closed, and the sound of running water began, all eyes transferred to Sherlock. Sherlock looked at Lestrade.

“Everything’s labelled and in the box marked ‘Brixton’, next to the fireplace. Next time, just ask.”

Lestrade sighed. “Right. Yes. Good. You all right, Anderson? Fine. Get the box, Donovan. We’re going. No, we have nothing to report. Nothing. Just… we’re going, Sherlock, all right? Going.”

And then they went.

Sherlock stood in the now empty flat and looked up the stairwell towards the bathroom.

And though he was not normally terribly domestic, or at least he was normally terrible at being domestic, he put the kettle on, made toast and eggs, cleared a space on the table and laid out breakfast, tea, water and two strong painkillers for John, before going to see exactly how much damage had been inflicted on his wardrobe.

**Author's Note:**

> There is a beautiful image of John by Czarits at Deviantart which I used to illustrate the fic on my LJ.
> 
> http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/066/6/4/john_hamish_watson__by_czaritsa-d4s0fet.png


End file.
